Is a national system for school data inevitable?

[An] infrastructure is emerging that would make it possible for dozens of states to share data about the students in their K-12 and postsecondary education systems, creating the equivalent of a national system of data on students’ educational progress.

That prospect excites many policy makers, who say the ability to gather and analyze such information is essential to reaching the widely embraced goal of getting more Americans into and out of higher education with a meaningful credential.

And at the very same time, it deeply troubles some Congressional Republicans and higher education privacy advocates, who say such a massive receptacle of data on students would inevitably impinge on individual privacy.